I thought this was addressed back in 13.5, but whenever I preview a comp that has an audio track, the audio does not play until 2 seconds into the preview. It doesn't matter if it's space or numpad 0, if cache before playback is checked or not, etc. I cannot time up things properly without having the audio start promptly in a preview. I had this issue with 13.6 as well and hoped it would be resolved by now. Please help, this is really quite frustrating.

I've heard from Tim K here on the forums that the AE team is developing a new way of delivering AE's preview to the screen and sound and this new way should fix a lot of this kind of bug. Hopefully it will come in the next update. In the meantime, filing a bug report will help: Feature Request/Bug Report Form

which is clearly not the case, at least in my experience. I filed a bug report as you suggested and what you've heard sounds promising, but it puzzles me how this bug could still be occurring when it seems so fundamental. Thanks for the feedback.

Sorry, I thought they mentioned it there. I know it's mentioned somewhere! They said one bug was fixed, but a different bug (with similar symptoms) is still on the loose and they are trying to track it down and squash it..